Murder by Gravity

by Barbara Graham

  Sew long strips of (A) on the long sides of quilt. Press to border. Add the short strips with corner squares to top and bottom. Press to border.

  Repeat process with 4 1/2″ wide strips of (A) and 4 1/2″ squares of (D).

  Quilt as desired and bind with 2 1/2″ strips of (A).

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “An outbreak of ghosts?” Tony stared at Matt Barney, his recent opponent in the sheriff’s election. “You make it sound like the measles.”

  Barney didn’t smile. “I don’t believe you’re taking this seriously. Maybe I can start a petition to have you removed from office.”

  Tony pretended he hadn’t heard the idiotic statement. In spite of a couple of editorials in the Silersville Gazette, he’d won the sheriff’s job by a landslide in August. “Even if we are having a paranormal invasion, just what do you suggest needs to be done about it? They aren’t stealing cars or silverware.”

  “How can you be so sure? I heard that Old Nem’s hens quit laying.”

  Without any facts to the contrary, Tony assumed that if indeed there were no eggs, it was more likely it was because the hens were ancient like their owner. “No one has complained to me about it, and the county egg production is actually not one of the myriad jobs of my office.”

  “Your office?” Barney lunged to his feet. “This office belongs to the people, the citizens of this county.”

  “Okay, then, get out of the citizens’ office.” Tony surged to his feet. Matt Barney was not a small man, but Tony was taller, and younger, and had an array of weapons at his disposal.

  “I’ll go,” said Barney. He narrowed his eyes. “But I’m going from here straight to the newspaper. I think the citizens have a right to know what you think of them.”

  Tony hated arguing, especially with someone incapable of reason. “If they wanted you in this office, they would have voted for you. Now, get out. I have work to do.”

  He settled down to study the reports faxed to him.

  It had taken much longer than hoped for but, at last, the smudged fingerprints on the thermos found in the airplane were identified by a North Carolina latent print specialist. They belonged to none other than Carl Lee Cashdollar, and were partially entangled with those of the café waitress.

  Tony couldn’t imagine a motive for Carl Lee to be involved in his father’s death. Why kill a man whom you rarely saw and against whom you said you had no animosity? Tony’s lack of imagination did not make his friend innocent or guilty.

  He and Wade dropped into the lawyer’s office without making an appointment. Carl Lee looked busy but not concerned about their visit. “What’s up?”

  “Your fingerprints turned up on a thermos filled with coffee in the airplane. The one your father jumped from.” Tony didn’t ask a question or mention that the tests for extra substances in the coffee were not finished yet. He simply watched and waited.

  Carl Lee stared unwaveringly, meeting Tony’s eyes. Silence. A single shake of his head was his response.

  Tony said, “Did I ever tell you about an incident I was involved in as a rookie cop in Chicago?”

  Surprise lit the attorney’s eyes. Another shake of his head.

  “My partner and I got a call to a high-rise apartment building. We were only around the corner and easily the first to arrive on the scene. A man’s body lay face-down on the sidewalk. It was not pretty and it was obvious, even to a rookie, that he had fallen farther than a single story. We glance up. I’m not sure why, but it’s what we all do. It’s a good thing we did, because we had to jump back to avoid having a suitcase bash us as it fell. It was followed by three white dress shirts in their store wrappings and a gift box containing a bottle of very expensive women’s perfume.” Tony paused. He hadn’t planned to tell this story, but he might as well finish.

  Carl Lee shifted on his chair. He was listening carefully to the story. “And?”

  Wade sat silent.

  “The detectives arrived. We pointed out the window the items had fallen from, or actually been dropped from, up on the eighth floor. We had counted. And a couple of the detectives headed up to chat with the woman in the apartment.”

  Carl Lee was leaning forward now.

  “So, Max and I are guarding the body and taking names of the curious when this beautiful woman steps forward and she says, ‘That perfume is mine. I want it.’ ” Tony suddenly felt like he was back on the sidewalk, half nauseated by the heat of the day and the smell of blood. “I asked her how she knew it was hers, and she says to me, ‘That’s my husband, and we live on the fourth floor of this building. Every time he goes out of town on business, he always takes three new white shirts and brings me a bottle of perfume when he comes home.’ ” Tony shrugged, wondering again why he was telling this story. “So that’s how she knew it was her perfume.”

  Carl Lee and Wade both stared at him. Their identical expressions of confusion and befuddlement said it all. He was exhausted and still paddling upstream.

  “Okay, I didn’t tell the story right. The man never left the building. Let’s forget I ever mentioned it.” Tony opened his notebook and looked into his friend’s face. “Your fingerprints are on the thermos, so I know you had to touch it. I’m going to sit here until you tell me when and why.”

  Carl Lee flinched but nodded. He began recounting his steps, speaking softly but out loud. “I had to go to Asheville on business, but I wasn’t sure I’d need to spend the night. I took an overnight bag just in case I did.” He sighed. “So I called my father after I was already in my hotel. We made plans to have breakfast together. He told me where to pick him up. The next morning, I showered, checked my email, and then I drove over and found him waiting in his car. It was parked right where he said he’d be. He climbed out of his car and into mine, and I drove both of us to the café. He said there was no sense in having two vehicles parked in the same lot.” Carl Lee paused, thinking, then smiled, clearly relieved. “Now I remember. Dad had his thermos with him because he said he’d opened it while he was waiting for me to arrive and accidently spilled a lot of the coffee and wanted to top it off while we were at the café. We ate our breakfast, and just before we paid the check and headed back to his car, he passed his thermos to the waitress and headed to the restroom. She topped it off with the coffee in the pot she carried, and I took it and screwed the lid back in and set it next to his plate.” Carl Lee tried to smile but failed. “My father was a coffee fiend. He drank it by the gallon.”

  The story made perfect sense and Tony believed it. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t check with the waitress on his upcoming return visit to North Carolina. “What was the name of the café?”

  “My working idea is that something in the coffee made Franklin think he could fly. It would be easy enough for someone who knew about his coffee addiction to add a little something to the thermos.” Tony looked up from the growing file. “What do you think, Wade?”

  “Sure, it’s possible. Franklin seemed to have some definite patterns.” Wade looked up. “Let’s say someone who knew about his coffee addiction added something to the thermos. They may or may not have known about the fishing trip. Maybe they expected a traffic accident to cover up the poisoning.”

  Tony leaned back in his chair and swallowed a big gulp of his own coffee. “Franklin drank the drug-laced coffee, and even though it was diluted by the café coffee, maybe there was enough of the substance to make Franklin think he could fly, without a plane.”

  Wade nodded. “So he unbuckled the airplane seat’s harness and climbed out of the plane, maybe thinking he was on the ground at his fishing destination. And splat. The end.”

  “We need to find out where the thermos was before the coffee spill.” Tony felt sure the report would show there was something extra in the contents.

  “I see a trip over the mountains in my future.” Wade stared into his empty cup. “Let’s do it.”

  “Yep. Grab your pen and toothbrush; we’re going back to North Carolina. There are too m
any gaps and detours. Someone knows about his transportation and also why this happened. I do not believe this was a suicide. Period.”

  Tony called North Carolina and set up a meeting with their liaison. Sergeant Dupont sounded happy to accompany them around the county and promised the weather would be better for this trip to North Carolina.

  It was. They made the trip easily. Wade drove while Tony alternated between writing notes to himself and getting updates on his smart phone. “Uh-oh, this report shoots another theory.” Tony didn’t give Wade a chance to reply. “The laboratory reports show there was nothing in the thermos but coffee and water. Even the water had only the normal minerals for this area.”

  “Man, I was so sure the coffee had to be laced with goofy juice of some kind.” Wade’s head moved from side to side. “Something that made him think he had wings of his own.”

  “Me, too.” Tony released a long slow sigh. “I thought there would be diluted drugs or gasoline or something that would make him lose touch with reality.”

  “It’s crazy, the whole business. Or rather, he did something crazy.” Wade kept his eyes on the turns in the road. “Unless he wasn’t crazy but was frightened or upset enough to just jump.”

  “Suicide?” Tony had to admit there wasn’t any reason to rule it out entirely. Families were so often bewildered when they were given the news. “The autopsy didn’t show anything like advanced cancer or other medical conditions that might inspire him to shorten his own life.”

  “Maybe someone over here will be able to add some insight.”

  “Won’t hurt to ask.” For no particular reason, and certainly without evidence, Tony did not believe the suicide theory. He was convinced the man had deliberately, and with malice aforethought, been murdered. He couldn’t see how or why or by whom.

  “Was Franklin prone to impulsive decisions?” Tony thought they’d start with the second wife, this time. Tony felt like they were getting nowhere. Maybe during their return visit, Joyce would be ready to share secrets with them. “Not a chance!” Joyce Cashdollar snorted as she laughed. “That’s just too funny!” The more she laughed, the funnier she seemed to find Tony’s question.

  “It’s been awhile since your divorce.” Tony hadn’t realized he was such a comedian. “Could he have changed? You know, loosened up a bit after retiring from the Army?”

  Joyce calmed and gave his question serious consideration. “Not likely. I’ll admit we haven’t spent any time together, you know, really, in years. He could have, you know, if he’d had a stroke or something. Otherwise, no.”

  Tony shifted in his chair, sensing she had something else to say.

  “His attitude kept him from being a brilliant leader and working his way up. Once he made colonel, it became clear that was as far up as he was going. He would never be a general, much less the general of generals.” Joyce twisted the large diamond engagement ring on her finger. “Once, in an interview with his superiors, they told him they needed a leader who, as the saying goes, could think outside the box. Franklin wanted the box, a lock, and a key, but lacked the magic touch.”

  “What about personally? Did he ever talk about his relationships with his son or first wife, or, now, the third wife?” Tony didn’t feel like they were getting any closer to understanding the man or what motivated him.

  “When we were dating, he talked some. Franklin didn’t go into the details of their lives or relationships. I think he loved his son and first wife very much, but he kept his feelings and memories of them carefully contained.” Joyce shook her head. “I never heard of him losing control of anything.”

  Tony couldn’t help but wonder about the eventual cost of living such a tightly organized life in a world filled with random events. He asked Joyce about the flexibility issue. “How had he dealt with plans made based on factors out of his control, like an inaccurate weather forecast?”

  “Shockingly poorly,” Joyce said. “It was very difficult for him to change plans on the fly. He was a very intelligent man, but he would sit and think and rethink until he came up with an acceptable new plan. One time we were traveling from San Francisco back to Tennessee to collect Carl Lee, and the flight was cancelled; some equipment issue.” Her lips squeezed tight. “It was not good. Franklin stared at the screen, the one flashing ‘cancelled,’ then looked at me, and I could tell he had no idea what to do next. I took our tickets to the rebooking station and got us new flights. He never said a word.”

  “That’s a beautiful ring,” Wade interrupted. “You didn’t mention your engagement the last time we visited.”

  Joyce’s lips tightened. “It didn’t seem appropriate at the time.” Her eyes widened as she realized what he was implying. “How did you know?”

  “You failed to tell your fiancé the engagement was secret.”

  “Oh.” A slight shake of the head was the end of her statement.

  Sergeant Dupont was running toward them, waving a paper and laughing. He climbed into the back seat of Wade’s patrol car. “Look at this.” He held out a photograph of Gentry Frazier driving through an intersection near the airstrip. The time and date on it was during the time he should have been flying Franklin Cashdollar over the mountains. “He wasn’t flying the plane.”

  “Let’s go back to chat with the supposed pilot.” Tony checked his notebook. “Who would know better than he what happened?”

  “Gentry Frazier didn’t immediately report the accident,” said Dupont. “Now we know it was because he wasn’t involved. Didn’t see it happen.”

  “Who do you suppose was flying the airplane?” Wade asked.

  Dupont shook his head. “Gentry might not have known about it until Mrs. C. needed proof her husband was dead. She wanted a body because there’s a funeral to plan and an estate needing proof of death.”

  “Murder for hire?” Wade suggested.

  “I don’t think so. Maybe it could have been some revenge business between the pilot and Cashdollar. No wonder Gentry was in a snit.”

  “He didn’t want to rat out a friend and didn’t want to take the fall.” Tony considered the ramifications. “It looks bad either way—covering up a crime or just ignoring it.”

  “What if he really doesn’t know what happened?” Dupont sighed. “Let’s say you loan a friend your car, he drives it out of state, picks up a sack full of stolen pharmaceuticals, comes home, and gives you back your car.”

  Tony picked up the thread. “So one afternoon, you come out of your office, ready to get home to the family, and the local drug dog is staring at your car. The vehicle is surrounded by crime scene tape and a group of happy cops.”

  “The dog’s handler is smiling like he just won the lottery,” said Wade.

  “You know you haven’t done anything wrong, but you can guess someone did, and left you with the evidence of a crime.” Tony had heard of real cases of just that type of bad behavior. “What do you do? If you accuse your friend and he denies it, you figure you’re screwed. So you call him and he offers to try to help cover it up.”

  “Only instead of helping, he makes it worse.” Dupont’s voice was a rumble of sound. “I don’t know about you, but I’d be mad or scared or some bad combination of the two. So, I’m out on bail, and I confront my friend, insisting he go with me to the cops. He refuses and calls me every name in the book, so I whack him with a golf club and he still won’t confess. Now I’m guilty of assault.”

  Tony couldn’t disagree. “Or maybe it doesn’t go that far. Maybe there’s not enough evidence to convict you, but if you can’t get your friend to confess and you haven’t been convicted, at least not yet, but everyone is looking at you like you’re scum, no one will trust you, and then your business heads for the toilet.”

  It was Wade’s turn to add to the story. “About the time you’ve severed all ties and offended your friends, you learn that the drugs were not stolen by your buddy but actually by your wife’s ne’er-do-well cousin, and he was storing them in your car. You turn him in. Soon yo
u’ve got no friends, your wife is leaving, and even the dog won’t talk to you.”

  “We’ve been in this business too long.” Tony laughed. “But, there is always the chance that someone will man up and say, ‘I’ve been so bad. Please, lock me up.’ ”

  “Dreamer.” Wade and Dupont ended the story together.

  “We find it very interesting that you claim to have flown Franklin over the mountains, but we found a traffic camera with your car and your face driving through an intersection when you claim to have been in the airplane, somewhere over the mountains.” Tony stared into the charter pilot’s face. “Care to explain?”

  “I was scheduled to be the pilot.” Gentry Frazier sagged onto a folding chair. “Cashdollar was insistent about taking the old biplane, and I tried to talk him out of it.”

  “Why?” Wade looked up from his notebook.

  “The weather turned so cold. I’m sure I told you I have a written policy where it says we don’t take passengers up in an open plane if the temperature is below sixty on the ground. It’s much colder up in the air.” Gentry’s hands trembled as he spread them in the air, palms down. “Here’s why I didn’t want to go up.”

  Tony saw the man’s swollen knuckles. Arthritis. “So what happened that day?”

  “It was so cold. My hands throbbed even with the fur-lined gloves on, and we hadn’t even taken off yet. Smith volunteered to fly him. So I thought it would be okay, even though Smith doesn’t have more than a private plane license. He’s flown the old plane a lot; he’s just not certified for charter. If it was discovered, I could lose my business.”

  “So any accident would not be covered by your insurance?”

  Gentry nodded. “Truly I thought he’d be safer with Smith than with me and my stiff fingers. They took off. Cashdollar had his fishing gear and his thermos. That’s normal for him.”

  “Did he behave in his usual manner?”